Copy Protection Firms Encourage Piracy?

Ars Technica has a reflection on the revelation that StarForce had linked to pirated versions of Galactic Civilizations II. From the piece: "It's not hard to see why the publishers use the stuff; after all, no one wants to spend a couple of years on a project only to see their efforts rewarded by flat sales and a robust pirate market. Still, in the quest for better protection, these copy protection schemes have grown in both sophistication and invasiveness. Some schemes now install their own hidden device drivers that monitor your computer's optical drive access, trying to prevent copying and other unapproved uses. (If this sounds familiar, it should. Game copy protection, after all, is just another form of DRM.)"

Perfectly Legal Scare Tactic

[paladinwannabe2]

While this tactic might be unethical, they are certainly behaving legally- it's allowed for me to tell people where they can download software. Now all the makers of Galactic Civilizations need to do is link to where people can illegally download Starforce-protected games with the protection removed. Turnabout is, after all, fair play.

Two Words

[Tom]

Two words: Notebook, CD-Check.

There's a strong trend towards notebooks as the everyday computer of most people, replacing desktop machines. Once you have a notebook, you use the mobility. Whether you go into the living room for a comfortable surf or take it with you on the train.

And all these stupid CD-Checks force you to carry a bundle of CDs with you all the time? How stupid is that? Not to mention that they're all fooled, cracked, broken in less time than it takes them to write new versions.

Like I said before: If game developers would save the money for copy restriction stuff and instead pour it into writing better games, they'd probably sell more.

Those who pirate always have, always will. Mostly it's the kids who couldn't afford more than one game every other month anyways if they had to buy them. Most of the pirated copies would not have been sales with harsher laws, better copy restriction or whatever else to prevent copying. They would simply be less people playing the game, not more people paying for it.

Re:PIA

[mschuyler]

Not trying to be critical or funny, but you're not normal. Your need to use Office or Windows isn't compelling enough for you to keep using them. Most people who buy Office and Windows don't see much of an alternative. Linux, Open Source, etc. are simply not on the radar screen. They don't read the EULAs either, by the way; they just use the products. When pushed to "validate" their product, they just go ahead and do it and don't worry about it. Where you can't be bothered with EULAs, they can't be bothered with DRM. After all, they're legit, so who cares? My point really is that the average customer for this software will go through the hoops as long as it amounts to a coupla clicks. You're a lot more sophisticated and you see the alternatives. But there's not a sufficient number of people like you to make a difference to the market.

Re:Not sure.

[LiquidAvatar]

I'm not sure that copy protection encourages pirating

The point of the article wasn't that copy protection software, as a technology, encourages pirates... it was that StarForce, as a company, *does*

See the (censored) screencap [galciv2.com] that is hosted on the GalCiv site, showing a StarForce employee linking to a pirated copy of the game.

Re:Perfectly Legal Scare Tactic

[Mycroft_VIII]

The problem is only changed a bit when you goto such schemes.
    Imagine you need to re-install your game a few years after release (hd upgrade, a virus imploded windows, you ran McAfee anit-virus, etc.). IF the company still exists, and is still supporting 'activation' and your not installing on a machine you don't want on the net, you are o.k.
    A lot of IF's there, I don't want to be beholden to some companies good will and financial stability to use software I've already paid for.
    And since these schemes DONT prevent copies being made I don't understand how these companies keep justifying the expense to the share holders, except to assume the shareholders are largely ignorant and/or apathetic.

Mycroft

Re:Big Picture

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. I probably should have mentioned that control is as much as issue as the feined piracy problems, but there were already too many points I was trying to make on such a small space.

Hopefully others realize this too, though not likely. It echoes of the RIAA and the music industry's motivations for shutting down filesharing. There are no moral, ethical or lawful barriers that will stop a company from convincing you it's okay to syphon your bank account away. It's only if they can get away with it.

How long until negative game/music/movie reviews will be viewed terrorist propaganda attempting to disrupt our economy? ;)

Located pirate version to easy use of legal versio

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Alcohol 120% to make images of all games that I buy. Not only does this help keep the original cd in good condition, but the game loads faster and I don't have to spend time looking for the cd I just misplaced. I was looking forward to Doom3 for some time. I had followed its development and read each new scoop on the game as soon as it became available. When the game released I purchased it the second day of its availability. I felt good. I was getting a new game and doing the right thing when I new many others would be pirating it. I get home and find out that it refuses to run until I disable Alcohol. I had been so looking forward to the game I hadn't even made a copy yet. Alcohol just had an linux bootable cd I was building open. Definately legit. I then began the full realization that I would have to shut Alcohol down every time I wanted to take a break and play. This pissed me off so much that I wound up locating the pirated version just like so many others. It worked easier. By giving over my money for the legal copy, I was the one being penalized. What kind of crap is that? To this day, I still refuse to have anything to do with that company. You penalized me for being a good consumer. Bite Me! You will not see a single dollar from me again. On the other hand, just hearing about the complete lack of pain, brow beating, strip searching, and unwarranted monitoring in the protection scheme for the new Galactic Civilizations caused me to go check out the details on that game. Guess what? You got it. That's where my money is going. So in a nutshell, the copy protection in Doom3 caused me to encourage pirates by downloading their warez for the game as well as sending my money to a different company. So ID has it worth it? I'll bet Stardock thinks so.

I spend way to much money on games

[SmallFurryCreature]

I had a good income but worked nights so needed something to do during the day and the internet (being dutch I payed by the minute, peak times) was to expensive.

So I played a lot of games, wich I bought. Still got a huge stack of CD's. The floppys were thrown out a few years ago as I figured if I ever wanted to replay one of them I would just download them.

Recently I haven't bought a lot of games. Why? Well I was starting to feel screwed. Hard. In the ass. By a big black guy.

While I am from amsterdam I still did not enjoy that feeling.

What was giving me that feeling? An increasing number of games that were to short, to buggy, to kiddy and just not worth the high price charged.

Lucasarts is for me the perfect example. Their early games were all near perfect. I had little doubt about buying x-wing and its expansions and sequels. Their adventures? Who needs a review when it got the lucasarts label?

Then came games like that horrible Monkey island with the moronic 3d interface that was a bitch to control. Yuck. Fun but ruined by some kind of need to use 3d in the marketing bullshit.

Worse was still to come. Forgot the title that was the galactic bit version of the current Empire at war release. Or howabout that RTS eh? The first one that was not based on the age of empire engine?

Crap games, that were buggy and just not fun to play and certainly not worth full price.

Even the x-wing series went downhill as it became less and less dogfighting and more and more missle dodging.

I feel less and less inclined to buy the new releases as I know that what awaits me is a poorlyb designed game riddled with bugs.

FEAR was great but is a 8 hour game really worth full price? Not in my book.

But there was anoter problem as well. That is copy protection. Why is it that the PAYING public has to mess around with game-cd's, impossible to read keys, non-working drives etc etc when the pirate can just download a far better game that just runs, with the update and isn't slown down by constant CD accessing?

An old sequel to elite, frontier something, took the absolute price in stupid copy protection. It stopped every 20 minutes or so to ask you to look up a word in the manual. Gee thanks, for that lovely experience. It was still BBS for me in those days but finally a friend gave me a cracked version of the game that skipped that stupid check. My first pirated game. Going from constant interruption to trouble free gaming by NOT paying 79,- guilders.

Current game protections would be like having a DVD that forces you to watch a 10 second segment warning you not to pirate the movie that ofcourse no ripper includes so only the persons who do not pirate see it. You would have to be completly insane to do that to your paying customers.

I still got money to spend, just that if I go to a game store today I just don't see that many games worthy of my money. The few that I still buy seem to insist on rewarding me for buying them by giving me a harder time then the people who pirate it.

Oh, and none of the copy protections work anyway. Empire at war has starforce and all you had to do for hassle free, free play was to wait till a proper group got around to crack it.

The game is indeed a current lucasarts game. CRAP. Worth about 3 euro in the store. Not 49.95